by Andy Conway
“And now I’m the one who was never born.”
The truck was almost upon them. Rachel felt the ground vibrate with its power.
“When it should have been you. You were never meant to be here, Maddy.”
She let go of Maddy’s hand.
The girl broke away, running to her mother with glee, skipping off the white-painted kerb.
Rachel saw the sudden alarm on Amy’s face, and Charlie’s, the truck almost upon them.
She yelped and jumped forward and grabbed at the child’s cardigan and yanked her back.
The truck roared past.
Her hair blew wild with the back draught and snatched the breath from her mouth. Maddy fell back against her knee and Rachel had her arms around her in an instant, holding her close, safe.
Amy scooped Maddy from her.
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” Rachel stammered. “I’m so sorry.”
Amy reached out and squeezed her hand. “You saved her life. Thank you so much.”
Amy walked back across the street and up the steps to the church hall, holding her child so tightly. Rachel watched them go, stunned with wonder at what she’d almost done.
If Charlie had guessed the evil intent in her heart, he said nothing. He led her away down the hill and turned into the ginnel. He was taking her back home. In the blackness of the alley, she shuddered with the vibration of the truck that was long gone.
— 32 —
THE APARTMENT ABOVE the village was a haven from the madness beyond those leaded windows. She had come wanting to solve a problem and now she just wanted to stay in this apartment and never go back out again. She wondered if Charlie would allow her to hide here for the duration of the war, then giggled at the thought of replacing Winnie as his housekeeper. Pushing her own great-grandmother out of a job. It was all so absurd.
A ringing in her ears. A fuzzy blur to everything, as if she were fading in and out, like a weak radio signal.
Charlie turned on the gas fire with a pleasing whoosh of warmth and said, “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“No tea,” she said. “I can’t take any more tea.”
“Yes. Perhaps brandy.”
He went to the cocktail cabinet and poured two glasses of Martells, bringing one to her. He took off his cap and trench coat and hung them on the hat stand. She was still in her coat with the fur trim.
The brandy burned in her throat, its warmth sweeping through her. She held out her glass for another.
He poured and pushed her to the sofa, sat her down.
“Relax,” he said. “Slow.”
She nodded, breathed, slumped into the sofa, her hands still shaking.
“There’s a situation at the police station,” he said. “A very bad situation. Your friend, Danny. He’s been arrested.”
“Again?” she said, though it wasn’t much of a surprise.
“He was looking for Amy Parker. Had her address written on a slip of paper. But they think he’s a spy. Silly bugger’s got a list of German bombings on him, past and future. He must have torn it from a book. It’s printed.”
“No. He’ll have printed it himself.”
“Himself?”
“On his printer.”
Charlie looked vacant, and she realized he was trying to imagine Danny having his own man in the printing trade, and unable to configure the use of the word on.
“Everyone has their own printer back... there.”
His vacant look turned to astonishment.
“Not like a person who runs a printing press. It’s a tiny desktop machine that prints out what you write, from your computer.”
“Computer?”
“It’s like a typewriter. A typewriter with much better keys, so that what comes out on the paper looks like it’s printed by a printing press. He typed it himself. Sort of.”
“I know what a computer is,” said Charlie. “But they’re enormous machines. We know the Germans are developing them. I’ve been to Bletchley Park where some interesting chaps are working on cracking the German codes.”
“Alan Turing,” she said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“He’s famous. He’s going to crack the Enigma code. Computers are tiny now. Everyone has one. Like a... like a... wristwatch.”
She realized there was no point getting into the whole internet thing: an encyclopaedia of everything in the world that wasn’t in books but on small screens, like a cinema screen, and nearly everyone had one. You could even carry one around in your pocket.
“He had something else on him too. A strange machine.”
“It’s a phone,” she said.
“A telephone?”
“Yes, they’re mobile now. Everyone has one.”
She swapped her glass to her other hand and dug inside her coat pocket, gripping the pleasant curve of her phone. A cheap, Pay-As-You-Go cell phone that was utterly useless and was probably dead now.
“He’s lucky that his has Chinese and American markings. If it had anything German written on it, he’d be dead now.”
“It’s just a harmless phone.”
“I see,” said Charlie, still amazed. “Well, he had that and the list on him and it doesn’t look good.”
He took the sheets of paper from inside his trench coat, unfolded them and scanned the contents again.
“It’s every bomb to hit Birmingham over the next few years. I could save thousands of lives with this.”
“You can’t use it.”
“I have to use it. All those lives. It could change the war.”
“You can’t change anything, Charlie. Look what Danny did to me. He saved one life – just one – and it wiped out mine. Imagine what might happen to the future if you saved thousands of lives. You would be messing with time on a colossal scale. And how would you convince anyone that you knew the future?”
He let the list fall to his knee. The look of despair on his face. All those people he’d have to let die; all that vital intelligence he would have to ignore. She felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to embrace him so they could weep together.
But she didn’t move. He slumped into the armchair across from her and sipped at his brandy.
“What are we going to do, Charlie?”
“I have to go and get him out.”
“How?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
She stroked her phone inside her pocket and nodded. It was dead, useless, but it might be the one thing that could get her life back. Charlie would go and try to get Danny out. That was fine. He would probably succeed. He would save Danny’s life.
“They wouldn’t leave prisoners in their cells during an air raid, would they?”
“No, they’ll be taken out and put in a shelter. It’s more what will happen to him if they think he’s a spy.”
“What will happen?”
“He’ll be hanged for treason. More likely for treachery, if they can’t prove he’s a British citizen. If I don’t get him out tonight, they’ll transfer him to Winson Green prison in the morning, and then he’s doomed.”
She took a slug of the brandy. It suddenly tasted quite bitter.
“And what if they thought Amy was an accomplice?”
“They don’t. I’ve cleared her.”
“So she might have been hanged too?”
“Most likely. She might get penal servitude, if they want to spare the noose because she’s a woman.”
Amy would die, but her daughter would live on. Though Maddy wouldn’t live on here, in Moseley. She’d be sent away, to the country. Rachel would make sure she was billeted far away, in Scotland, or anywhere that was well away from Moseley and Rachel’s relatives. She could make sure the child was adopted by a couple who would never come to live in Birmingham.
Surely that might work?
It was murder, but it wasn’t. Danny had interfered and created this mess. He’d saved Amy Parker’s life and given her thirty years that she shouldn’t have had, so it wasn’t real
ly murder at all.
In a way, it was justice.
“Charlie,” she said. “I have to get back to the church.”
“Are you sure? You look worn out. I mean, you look wonderful, and pretty... that is, er... you seem like you’ve worked hard today and need a rest now.”
She wanted to kiss him, fall into his arms and just be held by him. But she could never do that now.
“No. I’d like to get back. I said I’d help Amy out with a few things and I don’t want to abandon my duties.”
He nodded and slumped a little more. He was so tired.
“You stay here and grab some sleep,” she said. “I’ll be back later.”
She rose with a sudden sense of mission. Charlie nodded, startled, nearly drifting off to sleep as soon as she’d suggested it.
In a moment, she was down the stairs, through the yard and walking up the dark ginnel to the door of blue light at the end.
She had wanted to kiss Charlie, but it would have been a Judas kiss. She was going to betray him now.
— 33 —
AMY PARKER WAS WASHING up a great pile of tin mugs in the scullery. Rachel crept in and watched her. The victim she would murder. The life she would end. Humming to herself, unsuspecting of the catastrophe about to fall on her.
Amy sensed the presence behind her and turned suddenly. Rachel wondered for a moment if she had felt the malevolence, but she only smiled uncertainly.
“Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d gone home.”
She feels nothing.
“There’s still a bit to do here,” Rachel said.
“It’s never done, is it?” Amy mopped her brow with the back of her hand.
She senses nothing.
Rachel turned and left her. There. Amy’s coat hanging on the row of ornate hooks. Rachel slipped the phone out of her pocket and slid it into Amy’s. Turned around. No one had seen that.
Amy standing at the scullery door, drying her hands on a tea towel. Rachel smiled to her.
Deceiver. Murderer.
This would send Amy Parker to the gallows. But it would send Rachel Hines back to her father. It would right a wrong.
Half taking her coat off, Rachel feigned surprise. “Oh. I’ve just remembered. I forgot to bring Charlie’s report. He asked me to bring it along for him and it totally slipped my mind.”
She shrugged back into her coat.
“I won’t be long.”
If Amy Parker was disappointed, she didn’t show it.
Rachel walked out, quick steps, back down to the village and up through it, along the row of shops, past the Fighting Cocks pub, and along unfamiliar shops – a ladies’ outfitters, a blast of brine from a fishmongers’, the Blue-Bird café, a watchmaker – all replaced by a couple of supermarkets in her time. She turned into Woodbridge Road. The police station. An old, ornate building, not the modern, redbrick block she was used to. Of course, because a German bomb was going to fall from the sky tonight and obliterate it.
She walked in. A desk sergeant in a black uniform with big bright buttons looked up and his eyes brightened with a sly smile.
It was that thing called attraction. Men had started to look at her like that more and more.
Fatal attraction.
“Good afternoon, miss,” he said.
“I’d like to see Chief Inspector Clifford Lees.”
Angel of death.
“I’m afraid I can’t–”
“It’s Miss Rachel Bond. He’s expecting me.”
“Oh. Right.” He puffed his chest up to regain some of the self importance he’d lost, put his pen down on the ledger and walked off to a back office.
This is the right thing to do.
The desk sergeant came back with a cowed expression. “Come this way, madam,” he said, opening a flap in the counter, leading her through a cramped maze of desks to a door at the rear.
Chief Inspector Clifford Lees’ name and rank on the door in gold paint, with some letters after it to tell everyone how important he was.
The desk sergeant showed her in. Clifford rose from his desk, came around it and held out his hand.
“Miss Bond,” he purred. “How lovely to see you.”
Oily charm. The kind of man she’d encountered before, but rarely, because her dad had protected her from this type, but she was well aware that they were around. The kind of man who treated women as property, as conquests, who needed them only to grind out the hatred he felt for them deep inside.
This is the right thing to do.
“Please do take a seat,” he said, indicating the chair opposite his desk.
The desk sergeant disappeared. Clifford held her chair while she lowered herself into it, pushing it gently against the back of her legs. She was alone with him.
Is this the right thing to do?
She was feeding Amy Parker to a python that would swallow her whole. And that would solve all of Rachel’s problems. That was what she wanted. Perhaps he would swallow up the daughter too. Maddy, whom she’d nearly murdered.
“I understand there’s a spy,” she said.
Clifford sat back and eyed her evenly for a moment. She could see him wondering exactly what level of clearance this woman had other than a vague indication that she was from the intelligence service in London.
“Yes,” he said. “We think. There is certain evidence, but at the moment it’s in the hands of Lieutenant Eckersley. I do hope I’m going to get it back.”
“You’ll have it back tonight,” she said, as if it were her decision.
A little shudder of – what was it – irritation? That he was being ordered around by a girl. That this piece of skirt had some authority over him.
She would have to leave tonight. Clifford wouldn’t stand for this for very long. She could do this deed and go straight back home without even saying goodbye to Charlie. Without having to look him in the face.
“Amy Parker,” she said.
“Yes. Interesting that he should have her address on him. Lieutenant Eckersley thinks the man is an escaped lunatic and there’s nothing in it, so, for the moment, she’s free.”
“Because you have no proof of her involvement.”
“Quite.”
“I have proof.”
“How interesting.”
Rachel crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt over her knee. Clifford’s gaze slithered down her leg.
“I found something in her coat pocket. A machine. I understand the prisoner has one similar?”
Clifford said nothing. He opened a pewter casket on his desk and took out a cigarette, offered the casket to her. She shook her head. He lit his and puffed on it, clouds of blue smoke coiling all around his face.
“We believe,” she said, “that it’s a communication device. Sort of like a mobile telephone.”
“A walkie-talkie.”
“Yes. We think.” She left that ‘we’ lingering in the air – an intimation of smoky rooms in Whitehall where decisions were made that were well above Chief Inspector Clifford Lees’ pay grade.
“Which particular branch of the secret service are you?” he asked.
“If I was in any branch of the secret service,” she said, “I couldn’t really say, it being... a secret. So let’s say I’m just a dutiful citizen, doing her bit for the war effort.”
She threw in a conspiratorial smile. It’s all hush-hush, you understand. A nod and a wink for king and country.
Clifford stubbed out his cigarette and rose.
“Come, Miss Bond. If you’ll accompany me, please?”
She stood. He pulled on black leather gloves, reached for his cap and marched out, all business now.
In a few moments he had summoned Constable Davies and they were climbing into a staff car. They sailed off, riding round the corner, an absurdly short distance, pulling up at the foot of St Mary’s church steps.
Clifford ran up them and they followed, into the church and through the throng of survivors to the tea station at the rear.
Amy looked up with surprise and sudden fear.
“Amy Parker,” said Clifford.
“Yes?”
“Is this your coat?” He had stepped around the table, reaching out to the hat stand. His eyes met Rachel’s.
She nodded.
“Is this your coat, Amy Parker?”
“Yes, but...”
Clifford’s black gloved hand delved into the pockets and pulled out the little black Nokia phone. He turned it over, peering closely. “Made in Germany.”
“What’s that?” Amy said.
“Amy Parker. I’m arresting you on suspicion of treason.”
Constable Davies ogled and coughed, like he was going to spit out his spleen. Clifford nodded to him and he grabbed Amy’s elbow.
“What? No,” she said. “This is wrong. That’s not mine.”
Her panicked eyes, like a cornered animal, found Rachel’s.
Deceiver. Angel of death.
Constable Davies pulled her away. Clifford threw her coat over his arm.
“Wait. My girl!” she cried.
Awkward pause. None of them had noticed Maddy, clinging to her mother’s skirt.
“Take her too.”
Clifford took Amy’s arm. Constable Davies hoisted up the girl and they marched out, all eyes peering in wonder, the gossip already crackling like an incendiary.
At the car, Clifford paused, assessing the situation. “Davies, you sit with the prisoner.”
“Yes, sir.”
They put Amy and Maddy inside the spacious interior of the rear, where comfortable seats faced each other, and Davies sat opposite. Clifford slammed the door.
“Where’s Lieutenant Eckersley?”
“He’s at home,” said Rachel, “having a nap.”
Clifford nodded. “Excellent. That should make it easy.”
“Make what easy?” she said, fear clutching her throat.
“To arrest him,” he said, unbuttoning the holster at his hip.
“What? Why?”
“He covered for Amy Parker this afternoon, and now we have evidence she’s a German spy. That means he’s colluded with an enemy agent.”
“No! Charlie’s nothing to do with this!”